Google has made the jump into supporting Microformats as well as RDFa, calling their implementation “Rich Snippets”!

This is great news on several different levels. Semantic markup within web pages provides a way to target searches much more effectively.  TechCrunch provides an excellent example:

“If I was to write a post that mentioned “The President” without naming him, Google probably wouldn’t realize that I was talking about President Obama – it might think I was referring to another US president, or perhaps the leader of a company. But using RDFa I could tag the words “The President” with “Barack Obama”. That tag would be visible to machines spidering the page for indexing (resulting in smarter search results), but wouldn’t be shown to users reading the post. In effect, it’s a way to tell search engines about your content without exposing your visitors to extraneous text.”

In addition, sites that provide well-structured metadata have the potential to be much more usable (and useful).  Library web sites, especially OPACs and Resource pages, should include structured information that details the context of the displayed content.  Using microformats in our web sites will benefit everyone involved over time.  As David Peterson notes on the SitePoint blog:

“Now that Google is supporting structured data it is high time to learn how to use this stuff.”

The Library Web Site of the Future, written by Steven J. Bell, is yet another essay about what is wrong with library web sites, and yet it is not just another essay…

It is a strong critique that touches upon many aspects of our web presence, and emphasizes that users, both students and faculty, are increasingly bypassing it and seeking information elsewhere.  Read it with a critical eye towards your library’s web site, but I suggest taking some of it with a grain of salt.

Bell’s conclusion is that libraries have erred in not following the lead of marketing design experts, that we are moribund because we don’t let our sites be transformed into an “advertiser of campus wares to those who would buy into the brand.”

I suspect the answer is that our web sites tend to be moribund because we let them be.  We tend to design by committee, attempting to force what should be a easily navigated collection of resources into a click-fest labyrinth.

Try having someone unfamiliar with your website navigate it with a general purpose in mind (“I want to find a full-text magazine article.”) and see what blind alleys they encounter.  This is about the simplest usability test you can create, and it can be telling.  But it is only the start.

Bell suggests that focusing on usability is a misstep, and that it is simply “rearranging the deck chairs on this Titanic.”  I think that the problem is that usability is not a misstep, but only the first step in a different direction.

We need to make accessing our resources so straightforward, so open, and so universal that people will use them because it is the path of least resistance to the information they seek.

There are many elements to this, and Bell is right in many of his criticisms, but libraries need to be as universal as possible.  Keeping our resources in a silo, no matter how good the resources, does not generate traffic.  We need to open it up as much as we can, and continually push to open the rest.

In addition, we need to get our resources where our users are.  Do you use RSS to get information to users?  Do you use social networking to get information to users?  Your resources, if disseminated the right way, become your best marketing strategy.  Figure out where your potential users are, and then figure out how to connect your resources to wherever that is.

You don’t need to turn your site into a product to be marketed; you need to get your product to market.

found via LISNews

Last September I wrote about Libguides, an online service that creates web 2.0-style offerings for library web sites. I was impressed with the quality of their offerings, but had misgivings about the cost, especially when one considers that a library can do many of the same things with a bit of time and effort. Interestingly enough, that post is still high in my statistics, so people are interested in the idea and/or the company.

In a way, this is a sequel to that post, though not directly:

Interactive Course Assignment Pages (ICAP) is a site set up by Oregon State University (the “other” OSU to those of us who reside in Ohio) as an aid to creating Web/Library 2.0 home pages for college courses.

Blogs, Wikis and New Media is a site set up on WordPress.com, using WordPress software (same as this blog), that contains what was once held in the Utah State University’s courseware system.

These examples (and I am sure there are many more out there) show just how much can be done with time and effort, and minimal expense. We (meaning libraryland folk) oftentimes find it more satisfying to fit ourselves into someone else’s paradigm of how we should present ourselves on the web.

This is found in libraries that are locked into their institution’s web site, with perhaps the opac itself being the only area found outside the template.

This is found in libraries that are locked into their vendor’s offerings, perhaps customizing colors and wording, but otherwise sticking to yet another template.

This can be found in libraries that haven’t actively pursued their web presence at all, possibly because they feel they need to spend a lot of money or hire a web developer in order to do anything online.

This is also found, ironically, in libraries that throw Web 2.0 goodies onto their site without due consideration of how to effectively incorporate them into their services. Even though I strongly urge experimentation with new technology, too much of something can be more harmful than not enough.

Again, I urge libraries to look at your resources (servers you have access to, your employee’s skill sets, your budget) and figure out what you can do, and what you can expand into with a bit of learning and effort. Even if your resources are near to nothing, you can get a free blog on WordPress, and have someone learn the ins and outs in a relatively short time frame. For a small amount of money, you can get web hosting that will let you do most anything in the web 2.0 arena. The exception to this are those few tools which require a dedicated server, which gets more expensive and involved.

With just a couple of hours of work, I could set up web hosting, install a blog, e-mail lists, message boards, and a wiki. Customizing these (colors, options, etc.) would add some more time, but the net cost would be under $100 per year for a great many useful tools. Add to the mix: you get online storage for library promotions, information, and resources.

Hiring someone to do this setup wouldn’t add too much to your cost, perhaps even some form of trade (fine forgiveness, perhaps?). Imagine what your library might be able to do with something like this… and ask yourself what any or all of these tools would be worth. Not so much in money, but in time and effort.

Blogs, Wikis and New Media found via Weblog Tools Collections